As Burr Oak settlement payments arrive, old wounds reopen

An unknown number of graves were dug up in the historic cemetery over the last several years and the bodies dumped in the rear of the burial ground so the graves could be resold by the cemetery management. Blues music legend Willie Dixon and civil rights figure Emmett Till are among those buried in the suburban Chicago cemetery.

Lolly Bowean, Chicago Tribune reporter

On the day that his settlement check arrived, Charles Lewis paused for a moment and stared at the document.

It had been 25 years since he buried his 2-year-old daughter, Darlene, at Burr Oak Cemetery, in an area reserved for children. And it had been three years of attending meetings and searching for death certificates and public records in an effort to sue the cemetery owners after authorities determined graves had been dug up and plots resold.

His daughter's grave was among those that could not be located, he said. And now, after years of complicated bankruptcy hearings, the case that Lewis and thousands of others filed against the cemetery had been resolved.

Lewis was paid $50.

As Lewis stared at his settlement check, disappointment and anger welled up in his chest, he said. He knew it would be modest, but after attorney's fees and administrative costs, even the $100 promised was cut in half.

"I couldn't believe it," said Lewis, 49, whose father is also buried in the historic cemetery. "It's disgusting. That grave site is my only connection to my (deceased) loved ones. Now it's lost. And I get $50."

It's been three years since authorities learned that four workers at the once-illustrious Burr Oak Cemetery were allegedly digging up graves, dumping the remains in a lot and reselling the plots. In July 2009, the cemetery near Alsip was shut down by the Cook County sheriff's office and the four workers were arrested. Three of those cases remain in court; the alleged ringleader was sentenced last year to 12 years in prison.

After the scandal became public, more than 5,000 people joined class-action lawsuits against the owners of the cemetery. Some hoped that by financially crippling the cemetery, the lawsuits would force a closing. Instead, most of those suits resulted in small payments, about $100 to each family.

This month, the cemetery's bankruptcy case officially closed. As the settlement checks have started to arrive, some families say the payments not only offer little closure, but also have opened up old wounds.

Lorene Franklin's family buried three relatives at Burr Oak, two sisters and a niece, Ruby Jean, who died as an infant. Over the years, when she visited their graves, Franklin said she suspected poor management. But she swallowed her concerns and kept quiet.

After the scandal surfaced, Franklin and her family couldn't locate their niece's burial plot. Besides the digging up of plots, the cemetery's records were so poorly kept that many families were unable to determine where their loved ones were buried.

"We called a lawyer to investigate more," said Franklin, 59, of Englewood. "It wasn't about money. We wanted to know if our loved ones had been moved. We wanted to find out for sure ourselves."

They were never able to locate their niece's grave, Franklin said. They didn't follow the lawsuit closely or monitor the bankruptcy hearings. Franklin said they completed paperwork when they were told to, and a check arrived in the mail earlier this year.

"It's almost an insult," said Loretta Franklin, Lorene Franklin's daughter. "It's like $100 to shut you up and not talk or think about it anymore. We can't have our relatives moved with that. If we wanted to appeal or fight, we'd have to pay a lawyer. It wasn't just unfair to my family, it wasn't fair" to anyone.

The settlement check reminded Lorene Franklin of all the nights she spent sleepless over the possibility that the remains of her relatives were disturbed.

"We paid for our people to be rested," she said, her voice rising with frustration. "I haven't erased them from my mind. I haven't forgotten them. The spotlight is gone. The pressure is gone. But how do you fix this hurt?"

Through Perpetua-Burr Oak Holdings' bankruptcy plan, about $2.3 million was earmarked to pay the cemetery's creditors, which included the thousands of victims who filed suit, according to court records and documents. How court officials, lawyers and activists arrived at the settlement amount for victims is complicated.

According to the cemetery's court-appointed trustee, Patricia Brown Holmes, because there were more than 5,000 litigants, the court decided that sending out modest payments was the fairest way to split the insurance money.

"We didn't have a lot of money," she said. "Nobody is going to be happy. Who wants to know that their loved one's grave was possibly desecrated? But I can guarantee you that not every grave out there was dug up. Most are still there. We decided to settle with everybody."

The victims were divided into three categories, attorneys said. One class of litigants signed documents forfeiting any payment and devoted what would have been their money toward a fund to maintain the cemetery.

The largest class was made up of thousands of litigants who agreed to fill out paperwork, take a $100 payment and walk away. If they wanted to challenge the owners of the cemetery, they would have had to file suit individually, which likely would have been more expensive.

A third group of litigants, about 370 people, were those who could show evidence of significant harm, and they were negotiated with individually, attorneys said. Their individual settlements were kept confidential, but the total payment to that group was about $1.2 million, Holmes said. While the settlements were not evenly split, that averages to about $3,300 per person.

"The compensation is highly inadequate," said Tom Leahy, an attorney who represented 66 clients in a lawsuit that was folded into the bankruptcy settlement. "I can tell you, what happened at Burr Oak was an emotionally traumatic event. My clients are still having a hard time dealing with this."

Leahy said his office decided to forgo charging their clients, each of whom accepted $100 settlements.

"We basically represented our clients pro bono," he said. "The compensation was so inadequate, we felt it would be overreaching on our part to take any money from that."

Many families who accepted the $100 settlement said they spent more than that trying to prove their case. Lewis, of Milwaukee, and his ex-wife, Lisa Keys, said they spent more than $200 obtaining death certificates and public records to prove they had loved ones buried in Burr Oak.

While the Lewis family started as litigants in the group that claimed egregious harm, they were persuaded by their attorney to transfer to the larger class of litigants. When their settlement checks arrived, they were attached to invoices from the family's attorney, claiming half the money. The Lewis family's attorney, David H. Charlip, did not return calls for comment.

"It's just disrespectful and hurtful," Keys said. "This was supposed to help, but it hurt even more. We can't even go visit our daughter. We don't know where she's buried."

Lewis said the scandal has given him nightmares and fears that his family members are no longer at peace.

"I keep thinking, when I go, will this happen to me?" he said. "A grave is supposed to be sacred. That was my baby. When you lay somebody down, you expect them to stay laid down. You expect them to rest, then you can rest."

For some families, the check represented yet another injustice they had to face and, eventually, try to forget.

"That check brought back bad memories," said Florine Brewer, 79, of Riverdale, who buried four family members at Burr Oak but could not locate them after the scandal broke. Brewer said she cashed her $50 check, then tried to tuck the ordeal in the back of her mind.

"What has been done, has been done," she said. "I just take it one day at a time and move on. I thought, with all that stuff carrying on there, and with so many hurt people, more would have come from this."

Over the last three years, burials have resumed at Burr Oak — albeit at a much slower frequency.

The former director of the cemetery, Carolyn Towns, pleaded guilty last year to criminal charges connected to the case and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Three other former cemetery workers — Maurice Dailey and brothers Keith and Terrence Nicks — await trial and are due in court this month, officials with the Cook County state's attorney's office said.

More than $2 million of insurance money was set aside to revamp the graveyard and clean it up. Some of that funding will also go toward building a monument to honor the dead whose graves were desecrated. The cemetery is now managed by a new staff.

"I tell people it's going to take us a couple of years to get it where it needs to go," said Holmes, the trustee tasked with overseeing the cemetery since September. "It's a big job."